Wage, productivity comparisons are misleading

Nancy Guyott, president of the Indiana AFL-CIO, compared apples and oranges in her Sept. 2 My View concerning stagnant wages. She referenced the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal, pro-union think tank, stating that the "productivity of the U.S. economy grew 80 percent from 1979 to 2009." And then she states, "the hourly wage grew by only 10.1 percent."

She insinuates that each worker is working eight times as hard, for example in the auto industry manually installing eight times as many dashboards as was done in 1979. This is obviously not true. The fact is that U.S. industry has become dramatically more productive through the use of automation and robotics. All you have to look at is all the empty auto plants to realize that the industry makes more cars than it did in the 1970s with fewer people doing the work.

I wish that union leaders would do some honest comparisons, like comparing the number of third televisions, second homes and first boats owned by U.S. industry workers in 2009 to 1979. That would be much more revealing of the economic situation, rather than comparing non-related numbers published by union sympathizers.

Parker L King

Indianapolis

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Wage, productivity comparisons are misleading

Nancy Guyott, president of the Indiana AFL-CIO, compared apples and oranges in her Sept. 2 My View concerning stagnant wages. She referenced the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal, pro-union think